[See Update 3.0 below: The outage was caused by a software upgrade that apparently went awry.]

The widespread outage of AT&T’s U-verse service, which apparently began late Monday, continues today. It’s affecting a small percentage of customers, AT&T says, but there’s no estimated time for a repair.

The outage may affect all aspects of a customer’s service – television, Internet and phone – or just some of the services, based on the comments. You’ll also see that the outage is scattered. My service is out in the Montrose area of Houston, but in other neighborhoods it may be working fine.

AT&T has released very few details about what’s going on. An AT&T spokesman sent me the following statement earlier today:

“AT&T customers in some of our markets are experiencing issues with U-verse service. This issue currently affects less than 1 percent of our U-verse subscribers, but that is too many and we are working hard to fix this. We are making progress in resolving the issue which is related to a server complex, and are working to determine when service will be completely restored. We apologize for this inconvenience.”

Earlier statements by AT&T indicated “a server” was to blame, and now it’s a whole server complex, but again, there are no technical details being shared.

The U-verse Twitter account suggests that some users whose systems were knocked out by the outage may be able to get back online by resetting the gateway, which serves as the modem for TV, Internet and phone services. TV customers may also need to reboot the DVR. Based on instructions found at this U-verse support page, here’s how to do that:

1. Unplug the power from the wireless gateway, wait 10 seconds, then plug it back in. It will take a while for the system to sync back up with the network, if the outage isn’t preventing it from doing so. Wait several minutes and see if your service is working.

2. If your TV is still not working, reboot the receiver/DVR by pressing and holding the rectangular button on the front of the DVR for 10 seconds, then release.

3. Wait at least two minutes, then see if your TV is working.

If these steps don’t work, it’s likely the outage is still affecting you.

Update: An AT&T spokesperson now says restarting the system is not likely to help at this time, and the company is now recommending against a reboot.

Update 2.0: I came home about 5 p.m. today to find that my service is now working.

If your service was out, is it back up? I did have to reboot my DVR to get it to work. I did not reboot the gateway.

Update 3.0: AT&T finally provides some more detail as to why this outage happened. In a statement that includes much of the language from the previous one, the company reveals the cause is a software upgrade. (Boldface is mine.)

“AT&T customers in some of our markets are experiencing issues with U-verse service. This issue currently affects less than 1 percent of our U-verse subscribers, but that is too many and we are working hard to fix this. We are making progress in resolving the issue which is related to a software upgrade, and are working to determine when service will be completely restored. We apologize for this inconvenience.”

I had asked an AT&T spokesperson about the status of refunds for the outage, and so far that question hasn’t been answered. And AT&T didn’t provide a specific response to that question when queried by the New York Times:

When asked whether AT&T would issue refunds to customers, Mr. Siegel would only offer this statement: “We’re prepared to say that we will take care of our customers.”

Software upgrades are a common cause of service outages. Just ask Research in Motion, makers of the BlackBerry smartphones their associated services, which has suffered several embarrassing outages as the result of upgrading system software.

57 Responses

Not affected by this outage but our U-verse reliability has been very bad at different points in the past. They alsways say reboot gateway and DVRs even though this rarely helped. Their next “solution” is to replace the gateway. Usually by the time this happens service is back. My advice is always to write a letter demand refund for the month. If you don’t get satisfaction, write letter to CEO and Chairman of the Board. AT&T is advertizing and selling a service they can not reliably deliver. Of course, like everyone else, I fled Comcast several years ago. I also like that the AT&T technicians that come into my house are actual AT&T employees and they are always polite and professional.

You must be new to U-verse if you still love it. Give it a few months and you, too, will be cursing how it goes up and down all day and evening. I can’t watch a TV show without it hanging up, and I can’t rely on my Internet or VoIP always being available, either. We’ve already replaced the modem and DVR, so I have to assume the problem is with AT&T. I’d switch service but I know that Comcast is no better. We ran away from them years ago.

zero dollar house install….in a rental house….
Asked the “CONTRACTOR” (not bonded by the way..I asked)..
He hooked up to the previous : comcast, Direct TV, both satellite companies…
Only request was to run a phone and data line ..10 FEET from the outside box…this was done and he checked it from the inside..i signed the carbon copy of a ZERO install …since it was a house install. ……3 months later I received an invoice for a 499.00 dollar install! WTF…after 2 months of trying to get a field supervisor to come and look at a RENTAL that I was in…NO TRIP OUT BY THEM what so ever….to talk to the home owner / rentor…to tell them the house has not been painted in 9 years….PROVING said 2-10′ lines are the only thing that the contractor did……since the lines he installed were the ONLY lines not friggin painted!!

TV, Telephone and internet seem to be working for me, however I cannot login to XBOX live. The error messge I get from Microsoft is that the MTU is to small (has to be at least 1398). Even though the Modem is configure to pass 1500, still gets this error. I know exactly when I lost access to Live, as I was playing Monday night little past Midnight (Eastern Time). Before then I had no issues connecting to LIVE. I wonder if this outage is the cause of this as well.

That is the same issue I’m having with my service. Everything seems to work but the line MTU is down at 576 so I cant connect to Xbox services. Considering I was bumped off Xbox at around the same time I would guess that this “outage” is the issue.

Yes, the outage is the cause of the Xbox Live problem. I had the same problem, and saw it discussed online. The same site cautioned against rebooting one’s modem just to fix the problem. I, being a moron, figured that 24 hours later, Uverse would have fixed the problem. I rebooted, and now have no service…

My service was back by mid afternoon and was still operating (amazing) this morning. By the time I get home, it could be another story. Service was fine the first few years but in the last month or so there have been frequent short outages. Then over the weekend the frequency declined but the duration of each outage increased.
AT & T it may be time to upgrade your infrastructure. Yeah, there’s that term you don’t want to hear…make an investment in new hardware – spend some money to ensure service is reliable. What a concept, eh?

My service was out yesterday and I went online at work and entered into an online chat session with a technician. After he told me their was an outage on their end I asked for a credit. He said they would offer a 10$ credit for 1 day of service being out. Anyone who reads this and is experiencing issues go online, get to the troubleshoot and fix portion of the website (might take a little exploring) and enter into a chat session. Was real simple but if you want to get even simpler just call and ask for a credit. They’ll give you one.

Whatever you do, don’t reset your modem. I was having (and still am) slow internet speeds last weekend. I power cycled my modem Monday and lost everything until Tuesday. I am configured to have the 12 Mbps download speed. A speed test results in .184 Mbps. Sigh…

Dwight, did ATT say anything about DSL service? I’ve alway had bad service from ATT but the last oouple of weeks have been ridiculous. They keep trying to say that it’s my equipment, but then realize it’s them. By then it’s too late because I’ve wasted my time waiting on them when I should be at work trying to make money to pay for their bad service.
Lana K

My Uverse TV and internet have been out since Tuesday morning 4am. It is still not on. I finally got a customer service rep that was an American in Arizona. She could not tell when my service would be restored but she has already given me a three day credit. I have spent last evening reading a book and it was actually quite relaxing with no electronics on.

Mine went out about 2pm on Sunday and came back about 2pm on Monday. During the outage my modem was unable to get an IP address. AT&T’s DHCP servers seemed to be out to lunch. AT&T’s web site (via my smart phone) was useless and customer service (2 calls) clueless as to what was happening.

I don’t think having all eggs in one basket is such a good idea anymore. I lost TV, phone and Internet all at the same time.

I actually live in Little Rock, Arkansas and haven’t had service since Monday night. We were at first advised that “an AT&T tower was out” but that service would be restored by the afternoon. My neighbors were told that their service would be restored by 2pm yesterday. When we called back to customer service today, we were promised that service would be restored by this afternoon….its after 4pm and still no service. To be honest, I don’t think that even their customer service reps really even know whats going on….

I currently have no service at my home, and being a student that has a number of combined mode classes it has been very inconvenient. While I like the U-verse service in general I can see now I will be looking into alternatives so I won’t lose all communication channels (TV, Internet, and telephone) every time there is an outage.

For me this is the fifth multi-day interruption of service in the two years we’ve had U-verse, and a total of nearly 40 full days of interruption in that time. While this I believe is an unusually high number, I have been generally satisfied with the service as a whole.

Ive been out of service since Monday Midnight (Sunday, actually). It’s Tuesday evening around six and it’s still out. This sucks for two of us back in college and doing so much on-line reading, research, submissions, etc.. Im not at home with my family now because I’m at my college library using the internet. Too many outages is why we left BrightHouse Networks. This is a major inconvenience!
Hope this ends soon. Like now, would be nice.

Live In southern Connecticut only problem was the TV would loose signal for 10 to 30 seconds since Sunday just rebooted the modem and all the tv’s with ATT on the phone will wait and see if it’s fixed. Was interesting that one tv would loose signal on whatever channel was on but the other tv’s would be fine if they were on another channel. Had u-verse about 5 years first time we had a problem. Weds 8:30 PM

I’m also in Lindale Park and have had no issues. I only have Internet now, but have had Uverse for years, including tv, and would never voluntarily go back to Comcast! We’ve been very happy with Uverse overall.

Been using AT&T for several years. Internet is fair…TV is horrendous. freezing, pausing, dying..nothing can be fixed. I am tired of calling them. We go through the reboot, and etc every time. Repair guys have came out and found anything from ground wire to distance from server. If the monthly charge want so bad, it wouldn’t make me so mad…Is there an option????

EDIT: Of course, it’s only the local stations, but it’s still pretty damn good, and you get ALL of the subchannels and the smaller independent channels, which are nice in many cases. And like John says, the picture quality is unmatched in pay TV.

Uverse out for 3 hours, finally got customer service after an hour and they were no help, i was forwarded to a phone with a 45 minute wait. Would like a refund and would never recommend this service, in short it sucks. Looks like to me they have used all their bandwidth and can’t handle the customers. They will soon have one less customer.

Good luck with dealing with AT&T. They care NOTHING for their customers, only for their potential customers (until they become customers).

My internet (not Uverse but regular AT&T DSL went out and I tried to contact AT&T but no luck whatsoever. I thought possibly my modem went out so bought a new one ($70). FINALLY, after I got back online, AT&T informed some of us that they were having “power outages”, apparently all over the U.S.

So, I’m out $70 for the modem and AT&T offered NOTHING for our troubles.

I am asking all to copy and paste the following and email your congress person.
Dear Mr Congressman, I am respectfully requesting you to look into the service outage of AT&T U-verse from 1/21/2013 to 1/24/2013. The fact of the matter is that during the outage no one affected had the ability to call 911 if warranted. This should make it mandatory for AT&T to report the true number of customers affected. It is my opinion that AT&T is underestimating the number of customers affected. Also the fact that AT&T was not putting out timely information as to the problem or a time table for repairs.

With the multiple problems my sister goes through with U-Verse, I’m gladly staying with Comcast. Especially for the fact that when my neighbor has the 105 Mbps line, I get upwards of 50+ and I’m only paying for a 30Mbps line. Can’t complain about that.

Glad I am reading about the problem since contacting AT&T yesterday about my Internet being down all day did not help. I tried contacting them again about 8:30 p.m. and a recording said it was a 45 minute way and then it cut me off.

U-Verse has been a great improvement over Comcast. Comcast would go out for hours at a time and at least once a week. Repair service always wanted to schedule an home visit (at a charge) even with an “area” outage. The signal was always weak and double on local chanels. The techs would tell us this is as good as it gets.

Left Comcast four years ago…. there were and are absolutely the worst of the worst! (Even under the new name – Xfinity – don’t be fooled – it’s still Comcast.) Installed U-verse and have been in love with it ever since. Luckily in my area of Houston, I have had no outages. However, for the past year, my programs tend to “hang-up” and I get a “no-service” screen on my TV. Often, if I turn the TV off and then back on, the video stream is working. I’ve been told I probably need new modem replacements as mine are four years old and they’ve changed software since then.

And, (knock on wood) I’ve had quite good customer service! I’ve had AT&T tech guys come out and spend whatever time it took to get me online with my Internet. I can call them, and while I hate their automated menu, I can get decent assistance from the tech department. I have to say, I am quite satisfied with AT&T at this point, and they have without any problem, refunded me for out of service days.

No Uverse internet for 3 days. Phone support has no idea what is going on or when it will be resolved. Tech was unable to do anything but restart modem repeatedly and say he’s got the same issue at his home.

Just another issue since I was told to switch to Uverse for better speed and if it didn’t work I could switch back to DSL. Have had to reset modem 3-4 times a day. Techs say I’m 11k ft from source and that’s too far for Uverse. They find noise on the wires and say they can’t fix it. Tech’s have recommended I go to Comcast because ATT will not fix a problem like mine. I have talked supervisors at ATT but they don’t to jacksh… Comcast left me without service for 2 weeks so I dropped them and went to Dish network TV. We need an intervention in Houston by whoever regulates these monopolies!

AT&T is not telling the truth! I called them from Houston Texas and was connected to a Tech helper in Maryland. He told me that the whole Eastern part of the country is out! He said that was about 12 Million paying customers? I smell something fishy?